A group called CrossFit Fort Smith wants to purchase 1.9 acres on Veterans Avenue for $118,500 and use the existing building for a training facility. Concerned about the property’s proximity to a proposed medical school and high school, the review committee favored a three-year lease agreement instead. That recommendation will be made to the full FCRA Board of Trustees.

"Property around that medical school I think will be in demand," committee member Bob Bradford said. "I think we all want them to be out here. We just don’t want it to be there."

"There’s not a whole lot of property left between the medical campus and the high school," Hunter said.

The property contains one of three aging, metal buildings in a row on Veterans Avenue.

"It would be nice to see those 70-year-old buildings go away and have that property available for complimentary-type facilities that might have a relationship to the medical school or high school," Hunter said.

Wes Sadler of CrossFit Fort Smith said work is underway on the building’s interior.

"We certainly have no intentions of being an eyesore for anyone," he said. "Opinions run wild on how you take an 8,000-square-foot metal building that’s 70 years old and make it look like something. We know it can be done because we’re in the process of doing it on the inside."

Sadler said CrossFit offers "a community of people who come together and work out together."

"Our clientele are the people who live in these houses that are being built, the people that go to school there, the people that work in these facilities," he said.

Committee members and others said they wanted to find a permanent home for CrossFit at Chaffee Crossing.

"If they do this right, they’ll bring a lot of people out here," Cooper said. "We’d like to have them for sure."

The committee also reviewed a request from a group called Chaffee Commercial Park, LLC, which wants to purchase land at the corner of Roberts Boulevard and the future Interstate 49 for commercial development. The same group, but with a different configuration of members, FCRA officials said, previously attempted to purchase the property.

"The closing didn’t happen," Cooper said. "They’ve since come back with another offer to purchase this 10 acres at the same price, $30,000 an acre. They say they want to develop a strip shopping center, restaurant and deli on the property."

FCRA executive director Ivy Owen said one of the members of Chaffee Commercial Park, Mike Tankersley, still owes the FCRA $78,000 that stems from the relocation of a gas line at another Chaffee property.

"We hired a lawyer and sent him a demand letter, which he never responded to," Owen said. "About a week ago, we sent a certified demand letter. To this day, I don’t think he has ever responded back."

Owen suggested a resolution of the $78,000 before consideration of the property sale.